Nikki Haley clinched a win in the Republican primary in the District of Columbia, marking her first triumph in the 2024 campaign season. Her victory on Sunday temporarily interrupts Donald Trump’s dominance in GOP voting contests, though Trump is expected to gather several hundred more delegates in the upcoming Super Tuesday races this week.
Despite facing setbacks in earlier primaries, Haley has expressed her intention to remain in the race at least through these contests, refraining from specifying any particular primary where she feels assured of victory.
Following her recent defeat in her home state of South Carolina, Haley reiterated her belief that voters in subsequent primaries deserve an alternative to Trump, despite his strong performance thus far in the campaign.
The Associated Press declared Haley the winner after the D.C. Republican Party officials released the results. Washington, being predominantly Democratic, boasts only around 23,000 registered Republicans. Democrat Joe Biden overwhelmingly won the district in the 2020 general election with 92% of the vote.
Haley conducted a rally in the nation’s capital on Friday before continuing her campaign trail back to North Carolina and other states holding Super Tuesday primaries. During the rally, she quipped with over 100 supporters in a hotel ballroom, highlighting the presence of Republicans in D.C.
While Haley campaigns as a staunch conservative, she tends to attract more moderate and independent-leaning voters. In the South Carolina GOP primary, four in ten Haley supporters described themselves as moderates, compared to 15% for Trump, according to AP VoteCast. Conversely, the majority of Trump supporters identified as conservatives, while about half of Haley’s backers did.
In past elections, centrist Republicans like Mitt Romney and John McCain have won the city’s primaries on their path to securing the GOP nomination. Trump, on the other hand, placed third in D.C.’s primary during his 2016 campaign and won uncontested during his 2020 reelection bid.
